What season and episode of Game of Thrones are you on again? Was it good?

Brand

Role

We are living in the golden age of TV and movies right now. Never has there been so many funny, well-written, tear-jerking, adrenaline-inducing works of art that you can watch from the comfort of your couch. With so much to watch, how do you remember what you're currently watching? How do you find out which ones are actually worth your time? Can you readily recall what you'd rate a movie you watched 3 years ago?

Trakt is a platform where anyone can automatically track what they're currently watching, discover hidden and not-so-hidden gems, and connect with other fans around the world about TV shows and movies. With millions of users using the platform, Trakt has found a loyal following with no intentions of slowing down.

Creating a brand ready for the spotlight

Trakt's rebrand began with an exploration of the world of entertainment enthusiasts. The brand would have to resonate across the user base ranging from the casual TV show watcher to the hardcore users that had all of their movies ripped onto a network attached storage drive and categorized by genre.

I've always thought that there was something beautiful about the glow of a TV in the dark. Being in that situation a lot from working late nights, I wanted to explore the idea of being alone but entranced. These thoughts set the mood for the initial exploration.

It took maybe 15 minutes of sketching and researching online to see how easy it was to fall into the trap of creating something cliche. The last thing I wanted to do was to create a logo that looked like a TV for a service made for TV viewers. To help out with the exploration, I enlisted the incredibly talented Christine Vo to help turn over as many stones as possible.

Giving high-quality assets the shine they deserve

Trakt pulled in high-resolution assets and metadata from third-party APIs and the community was already a pretty die-hard audience that regularly contributed to movies and TV shows and together, these elements provided an incredibly stable base to design on top of. The full-width design would eventually be applied to the entire site, making the site feel more immersive than ever, especially on large displays.

There were many views that had to be considered. For example, a Dashboard would display detailed stats of viewer activity and trends, the Explore page surfaced trending movie and TV shows, and a single listing page would showcase individual episodes and movies so that users could learn more about their favorites.

Track what you're watching from anywhere

Designing for a user base of 500,000+ people was surprisingly challenging since it was the first time I'd ever worked on a project at this scale. The response from the community was mostly positive and the project went on to become incredibly successful with trakt having now grown to over a million users.

And the crowd goes wild

Designing for a user base of 500,000+ people was surprisingly challenging since it was the first time I'd ever worked on a project at this scale. The response from the community was mostly positive and the project went on to become incredibly successful with trakt having now grown to over a million users.

Note: This page doesn't show the full process, including concepting and ideation, due to either an NDA or the product has not been released yet. Want to see how the sausage was made? Please contact me to see if that'd be possible.